Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pride that I stand to talk about this important matter before the chamber which has been put forward by the member for Sturt. This motion comes in good time as spring is almost upon us, when it is a nice warm day here in Canberra and when it was certainly a warm weekend in Brisbane. This is the time when we should be applying 'Weed and Feed' to our lawns and fertilising our gardens in preparation for the growing seasons. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of this job is that my garden does not always get the attention it deserves. But this motion has, at the very least, prompted me to turn some attention to my garden in the coming weeks. The member for Sturt is right. Like most products, fertilisers can be used in the wrong way and occasionally with damaging results. I once heard a story of a bloke—I am pretty sure he was a constituent—who was gifted a square of grass from the Gabba cricket ground, because now they drop in ovals and the like and they do resurfacing. And so precious was this grass, especially in Queensland, that he took it home, planted it in his backyard, nurtured it, watered it and, for those cricket and Aussie Rules fans, developed his own piece of the Gabba or his own slice of history.

When he moved house years later, he dug up a sample of the grass so that he could take it to his new property so that he had a little slice of the Gabba at his new home. However, the next year he went to fertilise his precious lawn that he had taken with him as he moved house but, instead of applying fertiliser, he poisoned it with something like Roundup. Therefore, he ended up killing his own backyard piece of the Gabba forever. It just goes to show that you can make mistakes in applying simple fertilisers. It makes me wonder what has prompted this motion from the member for Sturt. Has he had a strange or a bad experience in his garden? Has he been exposed to too much manure?

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